“Coaches always like surprises,” University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee coach Rob Jeter told Sporting News, “and right now, he’s our big surprise.”
Coaches love pleasant surprises like Tiby, primarily because they come around about as often as legitimate sightings of a Chupacabra or Nessie or Bigfoot (y’know, almost never).
Tiby, an active, versatile big man capable of controlling the paint or stepping out and knocking down shots on the perimeter, has become Milwaukee’s new mythical creature.
Any doubts about that were erased midway through the first half of Monday’s game at Davidson, when the Davidson student section took one look at Tiby on the foul line and immediately started chanting, “Sasquatch … Sasquatch … Sasquatch.”
“Oh, yeah. I definitely heard that,” Tiby says with a laugh. “After the game, my teammates were making jokes about it. That’s the very first time I’ve heard that. I’ve heard Ogre and a lot of other names, but that’s the first time I’ve heard Sasquatch.”
It’s not hard to see where the Davidson students came up with the nickname. Tiby is a 6-foot-8, 230-pound mountain of a man, adorned with long, brown hair and matching beard.
“I kinda got revenge on them,” he said. “I was joking (with my teammates), they got the performance I had because they were messing with Sasquatch.”
Tiby roamed the post with the type of intensity the Panthers sorely lacked during their 8-24 campaign last year. He finished with 21 points, nine rebounds (four offensive) and three steals as Milwaukee upended Davidson, 81-77. It was Davidson’s first home-opener loss since 1991, when coach Bob McKillop’s team lost to Alabama.
“He gets the rebounds, runs down loose balls, he defends, he’s on his teammates, getting them in the right places, and this was only his second game of Division I basketball,” Jeter said. “To come into this place, this environment, wow. That was pretty special tonight.”
It was his second special night in as many opportunities. Tiby had 21 points, eight rebounds and five assists in Milwaukee’s season opener, a loss at Loyola; he’s 3-for-8 from beyond the 3-point arc in those two games.
Tiby is the type of surprise Jeter and his Panthers desperately need. After that eight-win season, they were picked a distant last in the nine-team Horizon League—Detroit Mercy was eighth with 141 points, and Milwaukee collected 69.
Tiby, a sophomore, took an odd route to Milwaukee. He received a few Division I looks during while at Urbandale (Iowa) High, but no offers from those schools. So he went to Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and there worked with head coach Doug Wagemester and assistant Quincy Young on transitioning from a pure center—6-8 isn’t really tall enough to be an effective D-I center—to more of a stretch-4. Until he got to Kirkwood, he’d always been the tallest player on his team, so it was an adjustment.
Tiby averaged 11.3 points and 6.2 rebounds as the only freshman starter for a veteran squad that went 27-5 during the 2011-12 season but fell short of the national tournament. Milwaukee recruited him hard—assistant Chad Boudreau was Tiby’s point man—but he eventually opted to go back to Kirkwood for one more season of seasoning.
“When I went back to junior college, I was really thinking, ‘Maybe I really should have pulled the trigger this past spring,’ ” Tiby said. “It was always in the back of my head when I went to practice.”
The doubts lingered, and when he was suspended the first two games of the 2012-13 season for a violation of team rules, Tiby took a deeper look at his situation. He talked about his options with his family—his dad, Mark, is a retired girls high school coach who is in the Iowa Girls Coach Association Hall of Fame; his mom, Beth, was an outstanding high school player who taught Matt most of his basketball moves; and his sister, Rachael, was a standout prep player for her dad.
Then, during a conversation with Wagemester, they came to the mutual decision that Tiby’s time on the Kirkwood squad had run its course. For Tiby, the desire to prove he was capable of playing Division I basketball was overwhelming, and he didn’t want to use up another year of eligibility at the juco level.
An academic qualifier out of high school, Tiby completed his semester at Kirkwood and joined Milwaukee during the holidays. Again, with the goal of maintaining three years of eligibility, he sat out the spring semester. “Sitting out was one of the two worst feelings,” Tiby said. “The No. 1 is losing. I didn’t like sitting out. I just went to practice every day and played my hardest, busted my tail to get the respect from the coaches and show the other players that I’m ready for next year.”
So far, so good.
“He doesn’t play like it’s his first year of Division I basketball,” Jeter says. “He’s fearless. His energy is contagious, and I think that’s the biggest thing we’re seeing. The guys are playing harder, and it has a lot to do with him. He demands it out of himself and his teammates. It’s fun to watch him mature. He’s really come a long way.”
Tiby’s goal is to help lead Milwaukee back to the NCAA Tournament. The school has been three times, most recently in 2006, Jeter’s first year as the head coach, when the Panthers upset Oklahoma in the opening round.
Tiby already has big plans for that potential return; he promises to shave his head—he maintained a lifelong buzz cut before starting to grow his hair out in March 2012—and donate to Locks of Love.
But, even if Tiby and his Panthers pull off a Horizon miracle and capture the league’s automatic bid next March, the clippers are still in the distant future. For now, he’s just a regular ol’ Sasquatch trying to prove to himself, and anyone else who’s watching, that he belongs in Division I.
